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Changing Fish Fauna of the Southwest 379 <br /> r <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />;i <br />;i <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />specimens of Cyprinodon macularius there on September 20, 1927 <br />(CAS 18561). In July 1928, C. E. Burt sampled the fishes at the same <br />place and obtained all but C. insignis and C. macularius plus an ad- <br />ditional species, the speckled dace. In September 1938, Carl L. Hubbs <br />secured the same species taken by Burt. In April 1959, our party <br />found the stream almost fishless, and took only Agosia. The creek <br />exhibited obvious signs of severe erosion, and the area between Pata- <br />gonia and Nogales showed clearly the effects of serious overgrazing, <br />with impoverished and badly eroding soil. Many of the great cotton- <br />woods along Sonoita Creek, and in the Santa Cruz River valley, <br />above and below the mouth of that creek, had died-probably as a re- <br />sult of the drastic lowering of the water table that has been acceler- <br />ated since 1950 by the swelling population in southern Arizona. The <br />original stands of tall grass had long since been replaced by mesquite, <br />cholla, prickly pear, and burroweed. <br />For many years the Santa Cruz River, intermittent from near <br />Nogales almost to Tucson, rose to the surface shortly above San. <br />Xavier Mission, about 8 miles south of Tucson. Here, on March 29, <br />1904, Chamberlain obtained 5 species: Agosia chrysogaster, Gila ro- <br />busta intermedia, Catostomus insignis, Pantosteus clarki, and Poecil- <br />iopsis occidentalis. By April 25, 1937, when Allan R. Phillips sampled <br />this perennial flow, only the resistant Agosia remained, and this is the <br />only species that I found there on July 12, 1939. By April 13, 1950, <br />the flow had disappeared, and I was informed by Raymond Hock <br />(then of the University of Arizona) that it went dry for the first time <br />during the previous winter. Even in early historic time, the Santa <br />Cruz ordinarily had no surface flour from some distance below <br />Tucson to its confluence with Gila River. It formerly maintained a <br />permanent flow in the headwaters, near Loehiel (Schwalen, 1942, pl. <br />II), but pumping in the San Rafael Valley eliminated this surface <br />water and its fishes (Gila, Agosia, Pocci,liopsis) between 1950 and <br />1956 (C. H. Lowe, Jr., personal communication). <br />EXTINCT AND ENDANGERED SPECIES <br />Since the close of the nineteenth century, no fewer than 6 species, <br />and probably 7, have become extinct in the American Southwest. At <br />least 13 additional forms have either been locally exterminated or are <br />threatened with depletion to levels from which they might not be <br />able to recover. In the following discussion, extinct species are treated <br />41 r <br />11